The Impact of Videogame Publishers on E-Athlete’s Rights and Obligations

Abstract

E-sports offer a career opportunity, a life goal, for many people. In this industry, the pressing question of whether it qualifies as a sport or not often arises, but one aspect rarely examined within professional boundaries is the legal standpoint. One major difference between e-sports and traditional sports is that traditional sports (e.g., football, hockey, basketball, karate) represent freely conducted activities, whereas e-sports are enabled by software, video games, which have copyright holders. Therefore, video games can only be used within the boundaries defined by copyright law, not just for consumers in the traditional sense, but also for e-athletes. This article examines the impact of copyright holders on the rights and obligations of recreational players who are considering or have set out to become e-athletes. The main problem is that the life paths of an e-athlete and a regular videogame player have a common starting point: recreational gaming, usually at home. The following article will focus on the EULA of the most popular esport game nowadays, the League of Legends.